The Waa Waa Factor

I’m pausing at the end of a long series of posts on the mind outside the brain to reflect on science, bad manners and objectivity. Bad manners are the norm in the blogosphere, and no one who dips into that world should bring along a thin skin. Salt air stings but it’s refreshing at the same time. There’s a raffish lack of respectability to blogs, however, that drive away good people and good minds. Insulting boors abound here, and it’s easy enough to go elsewhere and enjoy a civilized debate.

We should make Chopra feel rejected and unloved; we should hope to drive him away … because he is not good people and he does not have a good mind. He is a con artist, a fraud, a huckster. He’s a credulous kook who endorses astrology, doesn’t even understand science, peddles worthless magical nutritional “supplements”, and makes a living lying to people. What he means by “civilized debate” is engaging with sycophants who will not call him on his phoniness. I am pleased to hear that at least some people have made this charlatan uncomfortable on the web.

This does reveal a real problem by comparison, though: he can always return to the Big Media where the big bucks are and discover a whole mob of friends who will not question him. There is almost nothing on television or in the newspapers where journalists or ‘media personalities’ exercise critical thinking and actually make quacks like Chopra squirm a bit on air — there’s nothing but a constant buzz of unquestioning acceptance of any claim, no matter how absurd. In a just world, mindless media shills like Oprah Winfrey would be struggling to make ends meet selling Amway, and the demanding skeptics like James Randi would have the media empire and the big money rolling in.

At least some elements in the blogging world still maintain a true and worthwhile attitude of skepticism — that “raffish lack of respectability” Chopra complains about, by which he means “lack of respect” for his brand of charlatanry. Although it is troubling that an uncritical site for suck-ups like the Huffington Post can get so much traffic.

Comments

In a just world, mindless media shills like Oprah Winfrey would be struggling to make ends meet selling Amway, and the demanding skeptics like James Randi would have the media empire and the big money rolling in.

I was a bit disappointed that my Mom, my own dear mother reads his books. She has this idea that “The Universe, whether you believe in God or not, is on your side and positive thinking leads to happiness.”

Oh no not again:
“Science is the religion of our time, and deviation from its dogma, even in the name of science, brings too much stress to true believers.”
How can these people be so dumb. Science is challenged all the time and grows and changes as a result. In fact no science goes unchallenged, that is why it works and is so successful. If there was anything at all to woo it would become science in short order.

There’s a raffish lack of respectability to blogs, however, that drive away good people and good minds. Insulting boors abound here, and it’s easy enough to go elsewhere and enjoy a civilized debate.

Translated: Open fora in which people can comment directly and call me on my flagrant, transparent BS get on my nerves. I wish to retreat to the safer medium of publishing books, in which people have to pay money to read my woo, and my secretaries can screen out any written criticism that might embarrass me or, worse, actually, prick at the tattered remnants of my conscience.

Setting Chopra aside, there is an issue with courtesy online, but in my experience it’s less of a problem in blog posts than it is in comments.

It’s just too easy, is the thing. The very thing which makes the Internet such a wonderful medium is its greatest weakness. You can breeze through, leave a few insulting banalities and move on. It only takes 30 seconds, and your username protects you.

I’m not a big fan of regulation, although bloggers and admins may choose to remove the grosser stuff if they like, but you do wish some people would regulate themselves a bit more.

That’s the nice thing about this site – there’s a higher standard of debate.

And I’m sure this isn’t just another example of Chopra-esque woo. In fact, I am positively thinking that you’ll now explain what a “strange feedback loop” is in the context of a human being and how it has to do with Chopra’s assertion about the universe being on our side, complete with an example of a “feedback loop” that can be empirically observed.

#8: “Setting Chopra aside, there is an issue with courtesy online, but in my experience it’s less of a problem in blog posts than it is in comments.”

I commented on this idea on another site some time ago; there’s a danger in being too polite to people like Chopra, in that polite responses to their nonsense give them a false credibility. In other words, outsiders might say, “Wow, those scientists are treating him with respect, so his ideas must have some merit.” Chopra’s hucksterism deserves contempt; the only caveat I would include is that the contempt should be coupled with a clear indication of why he deserves it, so that outsiders don’t mistake it for simple meanness.

Does mind seep into matter like water going underground? Does it dissolve in matter like sugar in syrup? Or is there a seamless marriage of mind and matter that’s so subtle it escapes our notice, the way air does unless we pay attention to it? None of these are supernatural speculations.
These might not be supernatural speculations, but would speculations against nature do?

PZ: Although it is troubling that an uncritical site for suck-ups like the Huffington Post can get so much traffic.

Are the Huffington Post’s numbers that good? I wonder. Because Arianna Huffington has oodles of contacts in the MSM world and her blog did sport celebrity bloggers, she did get a nice bounce in the beginning from a lot of publicity. But I wonder who’s reading it now. I think many online magazines seem substantial (I’m thinking about Salon too) but they can never generate the reader loyalty and several-times-a-day visits of a blog with a strong singular voice.

In any case, the encouraging news is that while there were several New Age idiots like Chopra who wrote for the Huffington Post, consistently the commenters (and these are not Pharyngula’s science geeks) were very critical and slammed them in no uncertain terms. That’s why Chopra chose his own blog to whine — and even there he’s being attacked by skeptic meanies.

BTW: I was in an Ohio bookstore a couple of days ago, and “The Secret” was selling at 30% off, while the Dawkins and Hitchens books were at list price. Also good news, me thinks.
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Hey, at least unlike the Fundies, Chopra’s not going to burn you at the stake. All he wants is enough money to prop up his hilariously overinflated ego. (Go pick up a revised paperback copy of Al Franken’s Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot and check out the chapter on Chopra. He made the mistake of offhandedly dissing Franken once, and Franken in response bird-dogs the guy something fierce.)

In fact, as far as the Fundies are concerned, PZ and Deepak are both the same sort of prime fire fodder.

#18: “In fact, as far as the Fundies are concerned, PZ and Deepak are both the same sort of prime fire fodder.”

Congratulations! I can’t speak for PZ, but you’ve certainly hit my worst death nightmare. Not just being burned at the stake, but being burned at the stake next to Chopra, having to listen to him go on about, “Don’t worry – your quantum mind will survive and transcend this!”

I read the Huffington Post – it’s a good digest of what’s going on for the day. A few of the editorialists are provocative, and the mix is compellingly weird.

i also think Oprah has done a lot of good in the world. people need to wake up to their interior worlds, feelings, etc. – it’s a fundamental need and the act of doing so feeds progressivism – so we should cut her some slack. yes, she can be annoying, and have even more annoying guests – and yes she totally screws up once in a while – but she has used her powers mainly for good.

all that said, Chopra is a monumental jackass whiner. Unfortunately, paraphrasing a far more appealing figure, Liberace, he’s whining all the way to the bank.

Chopra has a piece in the latest Skeptic magazine (with Richard Dawkins on the cover, slaying the dragon of faith with the weapons of rationality–go Richard, go Richard, it’s your birthday!). He has written, apparently, some sort of anti-scientism screed. Haven’t gotten to it yet. Just bought the mag last night, and I like to read the good stuff first. Which reminds me, I’ll have a tough choice for the upcoming Seed magazine–PZ and Carl Zimmer. I might have to read in stereo.

“there are so many strange feedback loops that can go on in a human”
“And I’m sure this isn’t just another example of Chopra-esque woo. In fact, I am positively thinking that you’ll now explain what a “strange feedback loop” is in the context of a human being and how it has to do with Chopra’s assertion about the universe being on our side, complete with an example of a “feedback loop” that can be empirically observed.”

Vyoma, it has nothing to do with Chopra, but I thought that guy might be being hard on his ma, and she might have a point. Here is a real simplification of how it works: When you have negative emotions – hate, fear, and anxiety you strengthen neural connections between the cortex and the amygdala. The amygdala helps activate the sympathetic nervous system which pumps biochemicals like epinephrine into your system that prep you to fight or flee, but since being happy is not on the agenda, they tend to suppress any such feelings. What is more these same chemicals make you feel more negative.
As you strengthen these connections you make it easier to send such messages down and get chemicals back, thus strengthening the cycle.
Now if you can break that cycle and think positively you have a chance of activating the parasympathetic nervous system, strengthening connections (if I remember correctly) to the hypothalamus. This pumps other chemicals into the system such as norepinephrine, that can indeed make you feel happy. As you feel happy you strengthen these connections. Thus you can get a positive feedback loop in both cases.

That’s… that’s not actually a controversial statement. I don’t disagree with that and I’m not sure why anybody would. It’s within a hair’s breadth of a tautology: it’s true, but trivially so, to the point of self-evidence. It is demonstrably better for one’s health, prospects and mental state to be optimistic than otherwise.

The problem comes with claims like “positive thinking leads to material success” or “positive thinking is a replacement for action” or “positive thinking is more important than correct, accurate thinking”, all staples of New Age/Mystical Self Help sophistry. There’s a kind of short circuit here — it is a fine thing to have a positive attitude about life. It is another to make positive thinking the center of one’s life, especially if it means sacrificing your ability to think critically and rationally.

What you’ve explained is most definitely not woo, and thanks for taking the time to do it! Seeing a comment about “strange feedback loops” in the context of a thread about Chopra registered high on my woo-detector and I’m glad to see that I was wrong.

Vuoma, if you are intested in this stuff a book you would love is Sapolsky “why zebras don’t get ulcers”, very readable, funny, excellent. To give you a taste, when he starts to introduce the endocrine system and gets into chemistry he says:
“I expect by now you wish you had bought a self-help book by Deepak Chopra”.

But “strange feedback loop” is an echo of “I Am A Strange Loop,” the new book by Douglas Hofstadter (of “Godel, Escher, Bach” fame), and that book contains science, but I’d say it’s neither science nor woo, but sort of a science-metaphysics-speculative philsoophy mash-up. Compared to Chopra, though, it’s legit. I mean, speculation can be legit if it merely extrapolates from the evidence rather than ignoring it completely, and I don’t get the impression that Hofstadter has gone far awry in that way. It seems that Chopra wishes always to park himself in shade of someone else’s legitimacy and away from the brighter lights of skepticism and criticism. That ain’t even vaguely science.

“Hey, at least unlike the Fundies, Chopra’s not going to burn you at the stake. ”

Yet. History is chock-full of species of woo that are gentle, tolerant, stupid, silly, and non-violent up until the second they get some kind of real political power. At this point, they turn on a dime and start the killing.

What’s even funnier, stogoe, is that later he’ll deny he ever did so, and he’ll call anyone who brings it up a deceitful fraud. You could set your clock by it; he’s that reliable.

Back on topic, though, I’d like to second the Sapolsky recommendation. Lots of great vertebrate endocrinology and primatology information there, and very engagingly presented. My vert endo prof collaborated with him, and has some of the best stories about it I’ve ever heard.

Greg Peterson: I’m looking forward to “I Am A Strange Loop”; I got wrapped up in Hofstadter’s writing style when I was in high school, and never quite lost my taste for it. (I’m in the middle of rereading lTBdM at the moment.) I didn’t know it at the time (must have skipped the preface), but it was all about emergence, about how things like minds and consciousness arise from meat and electricity. (The example of Aunt Hillary and all that.)

A few years later, I was quite surprised to have someone have trouble wrapping their mind around the idea that consciousness could exist on a substrate other than meat, because the idea of consciousness that I’d gotten didn’t depend on some kind of undefinable, nomaterialistic magic. It was, as I realized, my primer on materialist philosophy. After that, explanations that a wizard did it not only seem unhelpful, but downright dull.

(Also, the last bits of lTBdM are some of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever read.)

Sounds like good stuff, and years ago I worked on a study of dreams and memory integration involving the entorhinal cortex that’s left me with quite a fascination for things neurological and neurochemical. On the other hand, I’m just about to begin work on a doctorate in mycology (fungi are my first love), so I’m afraid what sounds like a great reading recommendation may have to go on my ever-increasing “someday” pile!

The internet didn’t create rude inconsiderate people, they are a mainstay of American life. In the past you were limited in the number of them you were exposed to by the number any types of people in your social circle. The internet just exposes how many people are uneducated and thoughtless. Speaking ill of Chopra is a sign of neither.

I think you have that backwards: Ayn Rand wasn’t a very good novelist, at least in the modern sense. Symbolic pedagogy hasn’t been a popular novelistic style since the 1600s, and that was basically all she wrote. If you have a taste for Golden Age scifi, you may find it more palatable than most, but allegory is never particularly entertaining.

It’s her philosophy that has some quality to it; although she got a lot wrong, she did better than most.

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Isn’t it wonderful how referencing someone automatically means you agree with their philosophy, RavenT? What next, will you complain about PZ’s adoption of Rand’s Objectivism, since one of quote file’s selections comes from an Objectivist writing?

Greg Peterson said: Chopra has a piece in the latest Skeptic magazine… . He has written, apparently, some sort of anti-scientism screed. Haven’t gotten to it yet. Just bought the mag last night, and I like to read the good stuff first.

I just got that issue this weekend and have read Chopra’s review of The God Delusion. In short it was one long arguement from incredulity and ignorance. You may find it has some comedic value, I did, but I would suggest having your vice of choice available to get through it.

When I was in law school, I used to listen to a program called “New Dimensions” from The Institute of Noetic Sciences (or, as my husband called it, “The Institute for Moronic Sciences”). It was such soft spoken, earnest faerie-wings-and-crystal-energy blather that it was actually quite soothing after a long day of law school studying – sort of like listening to a babbling brook. Chopra was a frequent guest.

On the front page of the Institute’s web site right now: “Is it true that events such as 9-11 or the O. J. Simpson trial result in detectable changes in global consciousness?” I’m sure Chopra has an ready answer for them.

#46: You know, old Scot, I knew that RavenT and stogoe were sort of engaging in rhetorical overreach in needling you about your reference to Ayn Rand. I do recall you remarking more than once that you are not, contrary to popular opinion, an Objectivist.

I hope that both of your critics won’t think too ill of me for remarking that I agreed with your sarcastic rejoinder “Isn’t it wonderful how referencing someone automatically means you agree with their philosophy?” Obviously, one doesn’t imply the latter.

OK, but here’s the thing. You invite misunderstanding by choosing name-calling and insult over explication. I’m going to make you the same offer I made you before, which is that I would love to read a synopsis of your views. Where, for example, do you think Rand got it right? Where did she get it wrong? I’d love to hear it. I have no agenda, other than an honest desire to understand your point of view.

So, tell you what, I’m going to create a thread on my blog just for that purpose. It’ll be your show, old Scot. This is a friendly challenge to put up or shut up. Some people confuse my measured tone with insincerity or lack of resolve. You should be sufficiently perceptive to realize otherwise at this point!

This “Comments” exchange has been refreshing, inspiring, and welcome. I will send readers of my page SWIFT to it, for education and entertainment. I’m pleased that Chopra is seen here for the vain, pompous, blowhard he really is, rather than just a best-selling author of pseudoscientific drivel. There’s hope…!

alludes to their mind-set as ‘believers’. They generally use ‘skeptic’ solely as a pejorative against those of us who do not automatically agree with ‘those who must be obeyed’.

The sarcasm in the statement (IMHO) comes from the juxtaposition of a factual statement ‘[they] are skeptics’ with their recognized mind-set ‘skeptics are evil non-believers’…. i.e. they are self-referentially defining themselves as evil.

I do, strange as it may seem, read the comments and understand the language I choose to make my own comments.

I hope that readers of this blog will recognize that I am, quite often, somewhat obtuse… but always, and ever, a skeptic!

IF Deepak’s only error is a subtle misunderstanding of very complex issues, a polite and to-the-point correction would be appropriate. However, Deepak is a **$(*($**#Y%#$. Oh yeah, and he !#*(%&)#%*)!@#$ #$*()&#%)!&*#$. It incenses me that one with the letters M.D. after their name can so completely misrepresent science and medicine. He deserves every bit of blogspit that lands on him.